JF on Twitter
Issues in Criminal Justice (JF)
|
 Print
 A crippled mind is the worst kind of prison. Yet as an inmate in New Jersey's corrections system, Thomas Farrow knew the despair of living in both kinds of bondage. Diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, he spent over eight years in prison and became intimately acquainted with a mental health system that was wrecked at its core.
"It is nearly impossible to receive meaningful mental health counseling in prison," Thomas testified . He remembers the transfers between facilities and the turnover of psychiatric staff that made developing trust with counselors extremely difficult. Medication was widely dispensed but often inappropriately and without thought to its side effects. And, abuse from corrections staff was legendary. "In my experience, the majority of corrections officers responded to outbreaks by mentally ill inmates as a disciplinary problem. The response...was to place the prisoner in lock-up where he would go without treatment and deteriorate."
At times, the officers were outright aggressive.
"I personally witnessed two serious beatings of mentally ill inmates," Thomas shares. "In one case, an older man, probably in his 60's, was attacked by a corrections officer while we waited in line to get insulin. He was in the mental health unit, and although he had a gruff manner, he was harmless. This officer perhaps misperceived this man's manner as hostile or dangerous, and attacked and beat him with no apparent provocation."
Thomas and his fellow mentally ill inmates are not alone. The U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics reports that roughly half of the inmate population in our country - over 1 million people - suffers from mental health problems. Serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, major depression, and bi-polar disorder, fester in our prisons and jails at rates three times higher than in the general population.
The situation is so out of control that U.S. corrections facilities are now the largest treatment providers for mental illness in the nation. It's become clear that the experiment started in the 1960's of closing government run mental hospitals has failed. Rather than deinstitutionalizing these people, we have trans-institutionalized them - kicking them out of state hospitals to then lock them up in jails and prisons. But our jails and prisons are atrocious failures at handling mental illness.
David M. Reuter, an inmate in Florida's Cross City Correctional Institution writes in the Correctional Mental Health Report of his encounters with mental illness behind bars. "The dungeon held a small, old man who spoke only Spanish," he explains. The "dungeon" is the prisoners' label for the segregation unit where prison guards sometimes cast people with severe mental handicaps. "He was chronically mentally ill and blind. This man could not understand us but he was still considered obnoxious."
Eventually, the guards' patience snapped. "On a day that guards were extremely frustrated with his chanting, they pepper sprayed him," says David. "When I cleaned up the mess, you could see where the prisoner had stood against the cell's back wall while he was 'painted' with pepper spray. The entire wall, except for his silhouette, was orange from the spray."
Countless stories like these point to the terrible human rights implications of warehousing mentally ill people in prison. However, beyond the abuse that occurs, this practice is also deeply disturbing for our budgets and our safety. The average cost of housing any prisoner is $22,000 per year, and providing medical care on top of that runs much higher. One county in Texas estimates the cost of treating the mentally ill in jails and emergency psychiatric units is $80,000 per year. States from Michigan to West Virginia to California are trying to cope with plunging budget revenues and soaring prison populations. The financial burden of filling our corrections centers with the mentally ill is staggering.
The expense of locking up the mentally ill would make sense, though, if it was sure to make us safer. Yet, clogging our already packed prisons with mentally ill offenders crowds out space that should be reserved for people who are truly dangerous. The crimes of some mentally ill inmates are so serious that it's best for them to remain behind bars. However, four out of the five most common offenses for which mentally ill offenders are charged are nonviolent offenses, like disturbing the public order.
Also, incarcerating the mentally ill does little to alter the behavioral patterns that contribute to their criminal behavior. A study of Texas's prison system published in this past December's issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry reported that people with serious mental illness - ten percent of Texas inmates - were substantially more likely than the general prison population to have a history of multiple offenses. People like this often reoffend once released, cycling in and out of prison doors.
Programs that place these nonviolent men and women under supervision while providing treatment in the community are promising to be a far better way to help them avoid crime.
Mental health courts, which focus exclusively on offenders with mental illnesses, are one such alternative to prison that are gaining popularity. Over 150 of these courts operate around the country, requiring mentally ill offenders to undergo intensive treatment while under the watchful eye of corrections staff. Successful completion of a treatment regimen means that a prison sentence is waived. Studies of mental health courts in Alaska, North Carolina, Nevada, and Oregon point to their success in reducing re-offense rates.
These programs are not only successful in helping offenders change their lives but are also significantly cheaper than jail time. The Anchorage Mental Health Court costs an average of $20 dollars per person per day compared with the $120 dollars per day to incarcerate someone in an Alaskan prison.
And, most importantly, they provide much more humane care than the botched, even malicious treatment that occurs far too often behind prison walls.
 One program in New York City, the Nathaniel Project, demonstrates the remarkable results of placing mentally ill offenders into community-based treatment. Nathaniel Project staff members review the cases of mentally ill offenders and advocate in court for these people to be released to their custody rather than sentenced to prison. Once the judge has consented, the program provides comprehensive case management for the offenders, securing housing, mental health treatment, and ongoing counseling.
The transformation in these inmates' lives is remarkable. The Nathaniel Project reported that arrests amongst the 53 clients it had served by 2002 fell from 101 in the year prior to entering the program to 7 arrests in the year after intake. These numbers represent not only changed lives but also fewer disruptions to peace and security in our communities.
The terrible stories Thomas Farrow and David Reuter tell could become rare if our criminal justice system stopped warehousing mentally ill offenders and started focusing on treatment to help these people break free from criminal lifestyles. There is hope for broken minds. And neither a segregation unit nor a can of pepper spray are the best ways to deliver it.
|
|
